Maybe because there’s not much left on the shelves, maybe because it’s morning or because it’s Thursday, there are few people in the store.

Perhaps it’s because this Walmart is not closing but being replaced, or perhaps it’s because it wasn’t here long enough but no one refers to the end of the New Harbour Mall Walmart as the closing of a “landmark.”

But the Walmart’s been in the mall for 10 years and plenty of kids have this Walmart as their warmest memory of Christmas shopping, as their elders might remember Ames, Arlan’s or even McWhirr’s in Fall River gone — sacred-to-memory downtown.

In those years to come, when something has come along to replace Walmart, people born in Fall River will sigh at the memory of the Walmart in the New Harbour Mall and say, “Why don’t they have places like that anymore?”

“I come every day,” says Evelyn Smith, 61. “I always have a cup of coffee while I’m here. I guess I’ll go to the new one.”

“Sit down right now,” a mother snaps at her child, who stands up in a shopping cart as her mother shops the dwindling choices in the food section.

More empty shelves. Only two registers open, four people in line at one, only two at the other.

Outside, needles of hard rain are coming down into the parking lot and a dip in the asphalt rapidly becomes a foot-deep puddle.

On the west corner of Walmart’s tan brick building, an American flag hangs straight down, too soaked to wave, even in a strong wind.

Inside the mall, a mall whose long narrow construction has caused some Fall River wits to name it “The Harbour Hallway,” there’s a lot of quiet.

Page 2 of 2 - The pizza place is gone. For those with long memories, the record store is gone. The McDonald’s is gone, as is the movie theater.

I covered the opening of the New Harbour Mall Walmart. While smaller towns often object to or fight the opening of a Walmart, Fall River did not. Opening week was festive.

In the soon to be gone Walmart, where the echoes get louder every day, the employees clear out the shelves and a few bargain hunters browse the shelves posted “Clearance.”

In the parking lot, a woman in black clog shoes stands ankle deep in running water, loading her purchases into a Ford Explorer.

Marc Munroe Dion’s “Side Streets” column draws on his knowledge of the area and his affection for the city where he was born. It’s about people and places and history and the voice that comes only from one corner of southeastern Massachusetts.